A Gaming Diary
PSP
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Nov 14th
It’s great!
But the blurring and the second-long pauses when it searches for sound effects!
Oh!
I mean, it is great fun, but it has problems. The blurring’s probably the worst thing, I reckon. Sometimes it can be really difficult to actually see what’s going on.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Nov 9th
Another half hour or so of pissing about.
Fun, but very familiar fun. So much so that I found myself driving to the old GTA3 save point just now.
The two hidden packages I can see but not get are annoying me greatly.
I should do some missions at some point, I suppose.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Nov 8th
It’s a GTA game.
But it doesn’t look quite as good.
And the controls aren’t quite as good.
And a lot of the post-GTA3 improvements have been brought over, but not quite all of them. It’s annoying not being able to jump up and grab the tops of walls and fences, for example.
I only did the first mission and then buggered about exploring for a while, trying to get used to the controls. It’s not easy, but I don’t think it’ll hurt the game too much, Certainly, the familiarity of the map is going to be the main hinderance to long-term enjoyment. It’s similar enough to GTA3 to be annoying, while being different enough to be, er, annoying. Haven’t found any hidden packages yet. If they exist. I think I may have seen one, but it seems to be somewhere impossible to get.
And I wanted the garage to have a Banshee in it, damn it!
It’s certainly a worthy achievement and I tip my hat to all the guys and girls that worked on it, but I’m not quite sure if I want a handheld GTA3. Maybe if I travelled more.
Oh, and having subtitles off by default is an odd choice, especially as I don’t think you can put them on during the first cut scene. How many people always have sound on when playing a handheld, eh?
Doom
Nov 8th
Well, I put the Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories in the PSP, then realised I’d need to update the firmware to play it, which would mean getting up and plugging it in to the wall, which seem like far too much effort.
So I took my final chance to play some Doom on the PSP. The controls are shite and it’s horribly, horribly blurry… but it’s still Doom, and therefore great.
Just not as great as it is on a PC without those new-fangled annoying Windows keys that get in the way so badly when playing Doom.
PSP Emulation & Homebrew
Sep 28th
So, I got Doom working. Doom 2, to be precise. (Seems WADs should be called doom1.wad or doom2.wad – my doom1 is called plain simple doom.) Controls are a bit iffy – but I’m a keyboard purist for Doom – and it’s rather buggy, but, hey, it’s Doom. And Doom is The Best Game Ever. No, really. It’s always number one when I make a top ten games list. Ah, Doom.
Also tried Chrono Trigger. Now, every time in the past I’ve tried it I’ve got five or ten minutes in, got bored and left it for another year or two. Got five minutes in this time. But I did go wandering off where I wasn’t meant to be and got into my very first Chrono Trigger fight. I feel reborn. Or something.
What else?
::strokes chin::
Ah, yes, Zelda 2. Can’t find a candle. Have no idea what that Start Menu is all about. Got stuck. Tried to go through a cave without a light. Died. I AM ERROR.
PSP Emulation & Homebrew
Sep 28th
I want to play Metal Slug! But I don’t own it. Nor do I have it. So that’s out. I should remove the Neo Geo emulator from the list, it’s only mocking me.
Anyway, the NES emulator runs precisely half the ROMs I’ve tried with it. Zelda works, Excitebike turns off the PSP, Metroid works and something I can’t remember the name of goes to a grey screen and then stops.
Tried one of the homebrew games. Can’t remember what that’s called, either. (Some diary, eh? Forgive me, I’m ill.) Anyway, it’s a Bejewelled/Zoo Keeper style thing with an unexpectedly disturbing lack of animation and expectedly annoying lack of stylus control. Actually, I think it might be called Polygon.
PSP’s on charge now. Doesn’t really need to be, but I want it away from me, to stop me playing with it.
Oh, and Doom still doesn’t work. Boo.
Alien3
Sep 28th
In 1994 I was on the dole. I had a SNES with five games: Striker, Mario All Stars, Starfox, Street Fighter II Turbo and Alien3.
I loved them all.
And, now, through the miracles of technology, I have Alien3 in the palm of my hand.
Yes, it runs full speed on the PSP’s SNES emulator. It’s all right, too; my memory isn’t too far out of whack with reality. It’s a pretty standard 2D run and gun platformer, but non-linear. I just played a game, but couldn’t remember how to find out what different areas were called, so just ran around randomly killing aliens until I died. Bloody face huggers.
PSP Emulation
Sep 28th
So, I downgraded my PSP from 2.0 to 1.5 last night. A dangerous procedure, but I think several days of being stuck at home with a dodgy stomach have bored me so much that anything to do seems like a good idea.
It all worked, but getting emulators on there has been problematic. A pack of emulators I downloaded works, mostly, but everything else I’ve tried fails. It’s very odd and annoying.
The Megadrive Sonic games run, but the display is a bit odd in a way I’m not finding it easy to explain. A bit blurry, a bit jumpy, but not in a dodgy framerate kind of way. Seems to be better now I’ve shrunk the size of the window they display in and turned VSync on.
Tried the SNES version of Super Mario Bros. Runs quite slowly at time, not great. Might be okay for RPGs though, I suppose.
I’ve been playing the original Zelda game on the GBA recently – one of those NES classics carts – so I tried Zelda on the NES emulator. Seems to work, but I seem to have a shield equipped without having a shield equipped. Some lovely hacked ROM, I guess. It’s annoying, anyway.
Beats of Rage works, but the initial load is incredibly long. Then it hangs between levels and I have to suspend and then turn the PSP on again to give it the kick it needs to continue.
Doom simply doesn’t work, which is annoying. And, yes, I’ve got a WAD file in there.
A very mixed bag, then. I’m not sure how worth it is from a gaming point of view, but it’s good time-wasting stuff from a sick geek viewpoint.
